China's SMIC-Qualcomm 28-nm Deal: Why Now?

MADISON, Wis. — China's largest foundry, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC), and Qualcomm, the world's most dominant baseband cellular processor company, revealed Thursday, July 3 that they are collaborating on 28-nm wafer production in China.

Under the agreement, Qualcomm will offer support to accelerate SMIC's 28-nm process maturity, while SMIC will make Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon processors on 28-nm node, both PolySiON (PS) and high-K dielectrics metal gate.

With its future growth dependent on the advancement of its 28-nm technologies, the deal marks a big win for SMIC.

Less clear is what advantages this will give to Qualcomm, other than mending the company's relationship with the Chinese government.

SMIC isn't exactly known for cutting-edge process technologies, compared to other foundry giants.

Indeed, in an exclusive interview with EE Times last March, Tzu-Yin Chiu, SMIC's CEO acknowledged a broadening technology gap with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC). At a time when leading fab owners are busy talking about a 14-nm process node, SMIC's CEO then said that its 28-nm process node is "now frozen," allowing potential customers to test and verify SMIC's newest node.

Where SMIC's 28-nm process technologies stand. (Source: SMIC)

Antitrust investigation in China Since China launched an antitrust probe into Qualcomm late last year, speculation abounds that Chinese authorities are probing ways to coerce Qualcomm into collaborating with their electronics industry.

Qualcomm reportedly faces penalties that may exceed $1 billion. The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China's main planning body, raided Qualcomm's Beijing and Shanghai offices last year.

The NDRC has used the anti-monopoly law to target technology companies for practices that could lead to what it calls "unreasonably" high prices. In February, the Chinese regulator said it suspects Qualcomm of overcharging and abusing its market position.

When asked where the NDRC's antitrust investigation stands today, Christine Trimble, Qualcomm's vice president of public affairs, told EE Times, "We continue to fully cooperate with the NDRC and have no further comment."

Qualcomm is also saying very little about the deal with SMIC. Asked about which Snapdragon processors SMIC will make and when Qualcomm expects production to start, the company spokesman said,
"We're not disclosing any details."

When questioned why Qualcomm decided to pick SMIC as its foundry partner in China, the spokesman spoke in boilerplate: "Qualcomm has been collaborating with SMIC several years and this announcement represents an extension of this relationship to the 28-nm technology node."

In contrast, SMIC is much more willing to disclose the company's future plan with Qualcomm.

The following comment is speculative and (hopefully?) provocative.

This SMIC -Qualcomm announcement could be the beginning of pivotal change for the semiconductor industry. In my recent article, "28nm – The Last Node of Moore's Law" we have pointed out that dimensional scaling beyond 28nm would not provide reduction of SoC cost and, accordingly, 28 nm could the preferred node for many years. And recently we reported that the industry logic-SOC leader -- Qualcomm "Calls for Monolithic 3D IC ... to make up for the loss of traditional 2D process scaling as wafer costs for advanced nodes continue to increase". Now we have SMIC announcing that it will bring to the market a monolithic 3D for Qualcomm ("Going forward, SMIC will also extend its technology offerings on 3DIC and RF front-end wafer manufacturing in support of Qualcomm Technologies.") So yes, at this time "only a small portion of semiconductors consumed in China are actually produced in China" and yes, "SMIC isn't exactly known for cutting-edge process technologies, compared to other foundry giants." But as the value of the more advanced nodes is diminishing, this announcement suggest that SMIC is positioning itself to lead in the next generation technology driver - monolithic 3D, using the most effective node for years to come. If the rest of the foundries will ignore it, they may find themselves trailing behind SMIC in few years, in what by then could become THE technology driver.

Really great point you make here, @Or_Bach. Thank you. Yes, I did notice in the release, SMIC is talking about 3D IC, which I found interesting. But now that you add more context to it, yes, this could be interpreted as the beginning a big change for the semiconductor industry. Makes sense!

I would say Monolithic 3D will indeed become pivotal - for Global Foundries. They've got specialists from CEA-LETI over in the Albany area. Qualcomm already expressed their interest in this development and also joined the LETI M3D R&D program. I'm sure SMIC will catch up eventually, but they still have a long march to go.

My friend Zvi Or-Bach makes persistent comments about cost no longer declining in advanced nodes. This may or may not be correct, however. Many experts disagree and consider it a "mythology" based on a long discredited graph that is reproduced over and over.

More importantly, the argument may be irrelevant. It is indeed correct that gate density remains same in 20nm planar and 14/16nm FinFET nodal processes. However, power and leakage will profoundly decrease in FinFET process. And power and leakage reduction may be far more imortant than density increase -- for both smartphones and mega data centers.

3D ICs are certainly intriguing and are clearly approaching in few years in memories (HMC, etc.). In mobile processors bandwidth requirements are certainly increasing and drive new type of packaging solutions. Still - even here there are alternative approaches. Leading smartphone OEMs use non-standard memories with ball pitch with 0.4mm and even 0.35 mm pitch. This allows use of traditional package-on-package approaches.

Hi Sranje, my blogs about cost no longer declining are only reporting the accross the idustry public information from vendors like Globalfoundries, ST, and from Fabless like NVidia, Broadcom, AMD, and just few weeks ego Qualcomm - quoting: "One of the biggest problems is cost. We are very cost sensitive. Moore's Law has been great. Now, although we are still scaling down it's not cost-economic anymore. It's creating a big problem for us,". And we are pleased to see that qualcomm actually taking action as we recently reported in our blog:"Qualcomm Calls for Monolithic 3D IC", firs developing EDA with help of Georgia Tec, than support the proccess development at CEA Leti, and now setting up volume production with SMIC.

Yet, this is the first announcement of moving to monolithic 3D for SOC and logic devices. Clearly this could be the start of a pivotal change not only in technology but might be even to the composition of vendors that will lead the industry to the next decade.

Dear Zvi, my apology to have to disagree once again - there is NO universal agreement whether cost are or not declining in advanced nodes.

-- Intel certainly confirmed that costs are declining.

-- At GSA Silicon Summit on April 10, 2014 at Computer Museum in Mountain View in a panel discussion titled "Advancements in Nanoscale Manufacturing" all five expert panelists agreed that cost are and will likely continue to decline

- Bob Aitken, ARM

- Adam Brand, Applied Matls

- Peter Huang, TSMC

- Nick Kepler, now at VLSI Research

- John Kibarian, PDF Solutions

As for HMC and similar -- high volume production is about 3-5 years away

Most importantly-- the drive into fine node FinFET is likely driven by MAJOR power and leakage reduction rather than by increase in gate/transistor density. This would be more likely "the pivotal change in IC industry" that you are talking about.

As for TSMC's concerns -- Samsung (with GF) foundry services may be a more pressing concern than either Intel or SMIC

Hi Sranje, I agree, there are some who still believe otherwise, and Intel is the one most notable. As Intel is the last IDM in the logic space it might be that they can do something the others can't. Our blog "Intel vs. TSMC: An Update" provides an elaborate discussion that I hope you will enjoy reading. The year delay of Intel meeting it 14 nm production release does add doubts. And you can draw your own conclusion from the fact that non of the major fabless companies announced shifting to Intel for their 14 nm products.

As for your reference to some verbal discussion at the GSA Summit panel, I like to point out the non of the panelist represent companies who actually buy silicon devices. Yet all the major fabless companies has made public statements, and presentations with charts clearly showing that 28 nm would be the lowest cost node for many years. So you are welcome to hold to your views, I believe the facts are clear, and most importantly, the foundries - who are now way ahead of SMIC, do know these facts, and accordingly should pay close attention to this new collaboration: Qualcomm - SMIC - Monolithic 3D IC

As for HMC yes it is 3-5 years away, but it is not monolithic 3D. I was refereeing to 3D NAND, which is a monolithic 3D memory, also known as V-NAND. It is now in mass production by Samsung for SSD application.